All, The thread on making shot a few weeks ago was serendipitous. I
really am in need of making my own shot. I’ve experienced some
problems though and was hoping that those of you out there with more
experience could help.
The difficulty is that I seem to get flakes of silver in sizes
ranging from tiny (more like flattened shards of sand) to quite
large and not grain. I bought a 55 gallon container and I drop the
molten silver in the water from a height of almost 6 feet. The
silver I melted in a electomelt at 1850 degrees. I took a ceramic
crucible and drilled seven 2.5 mm holes in it. The crucible was
heated until it glowed red and was white hot at the point the flame
touched it. I know that the melt temperature was on the high end,
but I have to carry the heated crucible about 20 feet outside my
shop and I wanted to make sure that the silver would get through the
crucible; a problem I have experienced before. The silver made it
through pretty well except at the end of the pour it froze.
What say ye? Do I need to use a lower melt temperature? Would
heating the ceramic crucible in the kiln be better than torch
heating? If so, what temperature would be best to hold it at for
how long? Am I better off to use a graphite crucible to pour the
silver through since it holds heat more evenly? Is the problem of
flaking that the metal is hitting the water too hot or is it still
melted and deforming at the bottom of the container?
Normally this is precisely the project I love to experiment on, but
right now I am so busy I need all the help I can get. I’d just
order the shot but I’m looking for certain sizes of shot and if I
order the shot I only get about 10-15 percent usable sizes, so I
have all this extra metal that I really need to recycle.
Help!
Larry